Few can escape Somali famine

Insurgents said to be stopping starving people from fleeing country

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN New York Times

Published 12:01 am, Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Photo: Schalk Van Zuydam

Image 1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

A child reacts as she receives an immunization at a food distribution center as she and others wait to be registered as refugees in Dadaab, Kenya, Monday, Aug 1, 2011. Dadaab, a camp designed for 90,000 people now houses around 440,000 refugees. Almost all are from war-ravaged Somalia, with some having been here for more than 20 years, when the country first collapsed into anarchy. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam) less

A child reacts as she receives an immunization at a food distribution center as she and others wait to be registered as refugees in Dadaab, Kenya, Monday, Aug 1, 2011. Dadaab, a camp designed for 90,000 people ... more

Photo: Schalk Van Zuydam

Few can escape Somali famine

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- The al-Shabab Islamist insurgent group, which controls much of southern Somalia, is blocking starving people from fleeing the country and setting up a cantonment camp where it is imprisoning displaced people who were trying to escape al-Shabab territory.

The group is widely blamed for causing a famine in Somalia by forcing out many Western aid organizations, depriving drought victims of desperately needed food. The situation is growing bleaker by the day, with tens of thousands of Somalis already dead and more than 500,000 children on the brink of starvation.

Every morning, emaciated parents with emaciated children stagger into Banadir Hospital, a shell of a building with floors that stink of diesel fuel because that is all the nurses have to fight off the flies. Babies are dying because of the lack of equipment and medicine. Some get hooked up to adult-size intravenous drips -- pediatric versions are hard to find -- and their compromised bodies cannot handle the volume of fluid.

Most parents do not have money for medicine, so entire families sit on old-fashioned cholera beds, with basketball-size holes cut out of the middle, taking turns going to the bathroom as diarrhea streams out of them.

More Information

"This is worse than 1992," said Dr. Lul Mohamed, Banadir's head of pediatrics, referring to Somalia's last famine. "Back then, at least we had some help."

Aid groups are trying to scale up their operations, and the United Nations has begun airlifting emergency food. Somalia, especially the southern third where the famine is, has been considered a no-go zone for years, a lawless caldron that has claimed the lives of dozens of aid workers, peacekeepers and U.S. soldiers, going back to the "Black Hawk Down" battle in 1993, spelling a legacy that has scared off many international organizations.

But Somalia is considered more dangerous and anarchic than Haiti, Iraq or even Afghanistan, and the American Refugee Committee, like other aid groups, is struggling to get trained personnel here.

"It is safe to say that many people are going to die as a result of little or no access," James said.

Sheik Yoonis, an al-Shabab spokesman, said in an email that the declaration of a famine was "an exaggeration." He said that al-Shabab fighters were not imprisoning people in the camp, and he denied that the al-Shabab were diverting river water or scaring away aid agencies.

Western aid agencies are now trying to work through Islamic and local organizations as much as possible, but the Somali partners do not usually have as much technical expertise. And heavy fighting has erupted in Mogadishu again, making it dangerous even for Somali aid workers.

"Somalia is one of the most complicated places in the world to deliver aid, more complicated than Afghanistan," said Stefano Porretti, who heads the World Food Progam's efforts in Somalia.